A portfolio of my past writing, and new stories as I develop them. Almost always deliberately funny.

Monday, July 6, 2015

Review: ‘American Cornball’ entertaining trip through comedy history

American
Cornball: A Laffopedic Guide to the Formerly Funny

Christopher
Miller

2013

HarperCollins

New
York

By BRAD WEISMANN

Did
you ever wonder why being stuck on a desert island is supposed to be so damn
funny? Or for that matter, why falling safes, rolling pins, snoring, pie
fights, hoboes, alley cats, and big butts are an enduring part of America’s
comedy DNA? And -- do you want to know what those enormous sweat drops that fly
from nervous cartoon characters are called?

Christopher
Miller’s mother lode of old-school memes, tropes, symbols, routines and topics
is here to help. American Cornball
combs through the 20th Century’s postcards, ephemera, vaudeville
sketches, radio shows, comics, cartoons, and books to assemble a definitive
roster of stuff that used to crack us up.

A
joke’s half-life is usually dramatically short. Topical humor is by definition fleeting.
Any comedian will tell you that comic style changes over decades. Even a
successful one whose work is grounded in general human observation such as
Jerry Seinfeld finds he’s not connecting with a younger generation these days.
The comics our parents loved we saw as hacks, and our children will feel the
same. (If Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison had lived, would they have wound up
playing the South Florida condo circuit?) American
Cornball reminds us ars longa,
comoedia brevis.

Miller’s
voracious, if not masochistic, research, grounds an A-to-Z survey that
concentrates on American culture from the birth of the comic strip in 1895 to
the 1960s, when the idea of a large, homogenous common culture that shared a
toolkit of common laughter-generating topics sputtered and died. These primeval
gags lurked everywhere in the old days. Miller bravely tracks down their origins
and then offers interpretation and analysis, throwing in citation, context, and
a timeline as well. (For instance, he carefully breaks down the variegated
comic possibilities posed by the three classic home-invasion figures: the
plumber, the iceman, and the door-to-door salesman. Who knew?)

Miller’s
peculiar genius here is to pare down these examinations to brisk, entertaining
passages. His crisp wit sustains us throughout, and he constantly stuffs his
entries with tangents of information that make the reader not want to miss any
stray nugget of information. The casual reader can enjoy dipping in here and
there; the diligent (OK obsessive) reader will absorb many insights Miller
deduces from the no-longer-quite-so-hilarious evidence in front of him.

He
doesn’t shy away from the plethora of racist, violent and misogynist humor that
played so large a role in the comedy of the time and that we now longer
officially find acceptable. Long-gone ethnic caricatures of blacks, Jews,
“Polacks,” Italians, and “Irishmen” have already been joined by women-driver
jokes and may soon also see jokes about homosexuals join them in retirement.
Miller neither despises political correctness nor endorses old-school
tastelessness; like the best scholars he puts it all out there, tells us what
he thinks, and leaves the rest up to us.

And
dammit, it’s just funny. By the way, those huge cartoon sweat drops are termed
plewds. There’s a lot more where that came from, but you have to conquer this
entertaining tome of nerdy brilliance to find out.

About Me

This award-winning independent writer and editor returned to the place where he grew up after years as a wandering comedian. It's beautiful here. He served in a variety of capacities for the Boulder International Film Festival from 2006 through 2014. His writing portfolio includes stories written on topics ranging from grand opera to midget wrestling, for a diverse array of magazines, newspapers and websites worldwide -- including Film International, Westword, Boulder Magazine, Power Pickin', Parterre, Understanding Our Gifted, Movie Habit, Backstage, Muso, 5280, EnCompass, Senses of Cinema, Boulder Jewish News and . . . Philly Sports Faithful, for some reason. Also poet, playwright, screenwriter, blah blah blah. Check out his work at brad-weismann.com, filmpatrol.com and obitpatrol.com.

PM Dawn; Of the Heart Of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience

Ramones, Ramonesmania

Richard and Linda Thompson, Pour Down Like Silver

Richard Pryor, Wanted

Richard Thompson, Henry the Human Fly

Robert Klein, New Teeth

Rodgers and Hammerstein, Oklahoma/Carousel/The King and I

Roger Miller, The Return of Roger Miller

Rolling Stones, Some Girls

Shostakovich, Symphony #4 - Inbal, Wiener Symphoniker

Sibelius, Symphony 5 (final version) -- Vanska, Lahti Symphony

Sly and the Family Stone, Anthology

Steeley Dan, Pretzel Logic

Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life

Stravinsky, Les Noces -- Bernstein

Strength in Numbers, The Telluride Sessions

Talking Heads, Fear of Music

The Kingston Trio, The Kingston Trio

The Kinks, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One

The Mothers, Cruisin' with Ruben and the Jets

The Mothers, We're Only in It for the Money

The Velvet Underground & Niko

Tom Tom Club, Tom Tom Club

Tom Waits, Nighthawks at the Diner

Uncle Earl, Waterloo Tennessee

Van Morrison, Beautiful Vision

Village Music of Bulgaria/Bulgarian Folk Music

Vivaldi, The Four Seasons -- Zuckerman

Was (Not Was), Born to Laugh at Tornadoes

Ween, Chocolate and Cheese

Willie Dixon, The Chess Box

Willie Nelson, Shotgun Willie

XTC, English Settlement

" . . . you've got to stand up for the imaginative world, the imaginative element in the human personality, because I think that's constantly threatened . . . People do have imagination and sensibilities, and I think that does need constant exposition." -- John Read

"To disseminate my subjective thoughts and ideas, I stealthily hide them in a cloak of entertaining storytelling, since the depth of my thinking, shallow at best, might be challenged by erudite experts." -- Curt Siodmak